


Next Year in Jerusalem

by Luna



Category: Jesus Christ Superstar - All Media Types, Jesus Christ Superstar - Webber/Rice
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Blasphemy, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17027112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna/pseuds/Luna
Summary: Sad and angry, can't learn how to behaveStill won't know how in the darkness of the grave- The Mountain Goats, "Cry for Judas"





	Next Year in Jerusalem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



The sun is so high that Judas casts no shadow. The rope moves silently through his hands and winds itself around the beam like a serpent in the boughs of a tree. He looks to a sky that burns white, blinding him. A taste like molten metal in his mouth, like silver—it's silver that the Romans use, isn't it, to pay their way to the land of the dead?

Jesus would know. He'll know, now.

The sun is in his eyes, the rope around his neck. He prays for a clean break. One last breath, _shema yisrael_ —he prays for nothing after this—

It's dark when Judas opens his eyes.

 

*

 

It's dark when Judas opens his eyes, not yet dawn. The air inside his tent is thick with incense and sweat, and he can hardly breathe. He fumbles the tent flap open, steps out gasping into the desert night.

The Magdalene woman is sitting by the campfire, combing her hair.

"Let him rest," she says, looking at Judas out of the tail of her eye.

He would like to turn away, but he's not wearing a shirt and the air is shivering cold, so he moves toward the fire. "You're not his keeper," he says. "Or is that part of the full-service package?"

She doesn't dignify that with an answer. Wrapped in a blanket, under a moonless sky, she looks small, childlike. He hates her. He crouches beside her and their shadows dance around them.

"Why are you here?" he asks her, not for the first time.

"Once I'm awake, I'm awake," she says, pretending that he means here, by the fire. "He had a nightmare earlier."

So did I, Judas thinks. But he can't remember; it drifts away with the smoke. "Which one?"

She shakes her head. "I didn't ask."

That's well enough. "There are some," Judas says, tilting his head to indicate the farthest fringe of the camp, the hangers-on, latecomers and lunatics,"who think all his dreams are visions. Prophecies. If he dreamed it was raining they'd go and build an ark."

"I don't care what he dreams. He really needs the sleep, don't you see?" She leans forward, resting her chin on her knees. "He only has so much to give."

"And you've taken your fill," he says, unable to stop himself.

She gives him another sideways look. "I did not take him away, Judas," she says. "No one can steal love from another. I'm here because he wants me here, just like you."

Judas stands, hands curling into fists, fresh sweat stinging his skin. A handful of nights in Jesus' tent, and now she presumes to know what he wants. To speak for him. "You only think about one thing. It must be nice. It must be bliss." He gestures wildly at the sprawl of the camp beyond the circle of firelight. "To ignore the people who crawled here on their hands and knees. Our people, and you'd let them starve."

"What would you have him do?" She smiles, the shadows sharpening under her cheekbones. "Cut off his right hand and feed it to them?"

In the early days, when the mission was young and the passion was new, he'd have sworn that Jesus would do nothing less. Give his right hand for his people. By now, they'd be saying that where his blood fell, flowers grew. That's how a rumor becomes a prophecy fulfilled. What is the verse? _If thine right eye offends thee_ —Judas spits on the sand.

"Damn you," he says. "You're mocking everything we've done, everything we've sacrificed, when you never—"

"I never had anything to lose," she says, softly. No. It's not soft. It's a quiet growl, halfway between warning and threat. A dog likes to let you know it can bite.

The cold night breathes down Judas's neck. "And now you have _him_." 

She shakes her head. "I have my love for him."

"What a pretty story," Judas says, through gritted teeth. "They say he cast seven demons out of your body, have you heard that one?"

"Perhaps he did." She takes a battered canteen from under her blanket and sips from it. "What do you care?"

Judas stares at her. She holds out the canteen and he takes it automatically. In the desert, all water is holy and communal. No man takes more or less than his share. Judas drinks, but it tastes of salt and leaves him dry. He returns her canteen, careful not to let their fingers touch.

"So you're one of them," he says. "A believer."

"What do you care?" she repeats. "You've already made up your mind. You're always so sure about everything."

"Because I keep my damned eyes open—"

"At least I understand that there are things I can't see."

He cannot even find words for how blind she is. This woman and hundreds more like her, crowding around, spreading rumors, shouting to raise the dead—they go unarmed, but they're as dangerous as Herod, as Rome. They are not following Jesus anymore. They are hounding him, pushing him toward a blood-red horizon.

Judas sees it, feels it closing around his throat. "I won't let you destroy us," he says.

She looks up at him with her closed, secret smile, eyes full of fire. "But you _will_ let him sleep."

He has to walk away, can't breathe the same air as her for another second. Beyond the last lights of the camp, he begins to run. He keeps running until his heart pounds in his ears and he can't remember whether he is angry or afraid.

All that day, and the next, and the next, he tries to speak to Jesus alone. _Listen. Protect yourself. Keep your head down. Watch who shares your bed. Listen to me._ He tries whispering, he tries shouting, but it makes no difference. A hundred times, Jesus turns away. And the truth sinks into Judas like a drop of poison into water, spreading slowly until it darkens and fouls everything. Jesus doesn't want to hear him. Jesus does not believe him. Jesus believes—

"He's going to get us all killed," Judas says. Bile on his tongue. "Would you promise—"

"Yes," the high priests say. "We promise."

They are lying. He knows that, of course he does. But at least they are listening.

Everything after that unfolds with the simple, relentless logic of nightmare. There is supper in the garden one night, and then it is morning and the soldiers come. That day, the sun is so high and huge that there is no escaping into shade. Judas has a length of rope wrapped around his arm, and his pockets are weighted with silver. He looks for a tree. He says a prayer.

 

*

 

It's dark when Judas opens his eyes. He knows that he's dead, because there's no more pain. He waits. For his punishment, or for revelation, or maybe just to find out what he's waiting for. There must be a reason, a _point_ — 

Jesus is there before him, on his knees. He's been beaten to the last inch, whipped and torn, broken open. Yet he is still breathing. Either he desperately wants to live, or he doesn't know how to die.

"Where's your kingdom now?" Judas asks him. "Where is your lake of fire?"

Jesus looks up at him with a kind of blurred recognition, as if he has walked across the entire surface of the earth only to meet, at the end of the world, some other wretch from Galilee.

Someone ought to put him out of his misery, Judas thinks. He reaches out, but stops short of touching the living man. Even here, even now, he's afraid of getting Jesus' blood on his hands. "Tell me the truth. Who are you? Are you—"

His lips will not shape the name of the Lord.

"Are you what they say you are?"

His voice echoes, fragmenting into a thousand voices, asking the question a thousand ways, angry and sorrowful, mocking and begging. A chorus of echoes that fill the void and then fall away unanswered.

Jesus bows his head, lost in prayer or maybe just in pain. Finally, all is silent except for his struggling breath.

"You don't know," Judas says. If he was alive, he'd laugh. "You don't know, do you?"

It takes Jesus terrible strength to lift his face. Despite the heavy mask of bruises, his eyes have become clear. He looks at Judas and sees him absolutely, like he always did, like no one else ever could. There is no judgment here. There is no mercy.

"It's the wrong question," Jesus says. And he is gone, swallowed up by the world.

Judas waits.

 

*

 

There is light trapped inside Judas's eyelids, a pattern that shifts every time he blinks. Maybe he's done too much acid. Maybe he's gone too long without sleep. The line is thin between dreams and reality, but he can't erase it entirely. He still knows which side he's on.

"You look hungry," the FBI agent says.

Judas can only stare at him in disgust. His stomach is boiling, his skin is cold and damp, and under the table, his knee keeps jumping: the body in rebellion.

The fed shrugs. "Hey, buddy, you called me."

Yes. He did that. He slipped away from the commune before dawn, hitchhiked into the city and called from a pay phone. He demanded to see the fed's badge—Caiaphas, he'd glimpsed the name—just like they do in the movies. At every step, Judas has told himself that he didn't have to go any further. Now he casts his eyes around the diner, makes sure he has a clear shot at the exit.

"You know the mistake you're going to make?" he asks. "You hear the music and see a lot of long-haired kids hanging around and you think, _stupid hippies_. You think you know how to handle it. But Jesus isn't anyone you know. He's too smart for you." Judas slouches against the low back of the booth, wishes he could sink down deeper. "He knows what's about to go down."

Caiaphas is unshaven and dressed in faded jeans, but his smile is government issue. Very straight, very white, and a predatory glint in his eye. "We understand he's dangerous."

Judas is thinking of Jesus' hands, the gentlest hands he's ever seen. He's spent hours watching them, dancing over guitar strings, or sketching in the air as he tells a story. Graceful movements that might disguise their strength, their incredible heat. But Judas has been touched by those hands. "You have no idea," he says.

"Nobody has to get hurt."

Judas bursts out laughing. "Fuck you, man. You send kids halfway around the world to die, to kill civilians, bomb villages, napalm—"

"Okay." Caiaphas signals to a waitress, holds up two fingers. "The usual."

"And how about Detroit? How about those kids in Ohio? Nobody has to get hurt, all right, but it happens, over and over—"

"That's why I want you," Caiaphas says. "To help me avoid that kind of shit. Keep innocent people out of the crossfire."

If Judas laughs any harder, he's going to go completely hysterical, start to scream. He chokes it back. The air tastes of grease and smoke, something burning on the grill. "None of us are innocent," he says. "Or else we all are."

"Yeah? And what if your boss knew you were here right now? You think he'd say, hey, no harm, no foul, you're innocent?"

"He's not my boss," Judas says, automatically. He can't help shooting another glance at the door, half-wishing that Jesus or someone else would walk in and take over. But he's sure he wasn't followed. Most likely, no one's even missed him yet. "If he knew—I think he must know. I think he understands."

Caiaphas frowns into his beard. "What is it with this guy? He's got you people wrapped around his finger. Following him out to the middle of fucking Death Valley, sleeping rough. Every time he shows his face in public, there's a riot. The crazy stories I've heard—nobody's dope is _that_ good."

Judas closes his eyes. The colors move, the pattern shifts, and it feels like falling in a dream. He grips the edge of the table to steady himself. "I've known him a long time," he says. "Before the crowds showed up, before he started talking about the end of the world. Jesus never put himself before anyone else. Never ate until the rest of us were fed. We'd work all day and talk all night, and it was like—like hearing a new song for the first time. He woke us up."

A clatter of dishes. The waitress sets down two plates of toast and eggs overeasy, two cups of coffee, little plastic tubs of cream. Caiaphas thanks her, picks up his cup, and turns his straight-razor smile back on Judas. "He told you what you wanted to hear."

"Maybe," Judas says. It hurts to remember. "But he used to listen, too."

"That kind of thing, it's nice, but it never lasts."

Malcolm. Martin. Bobby Kennedy. Fred Hampton. Judas swallows hard. "You don't have to tell me."

Caiaphas blows steam off the surface of his coffee. "It's either gonna be a bunch of redneck cops looking to bash some heads in, or else some hopped-up kid who decides to hurry the revolution up with a bullet."

If Jesus were here, he would say, _There is a price for speaking truth to power. I'm not afraid to pay it._ He says that kind of thing often now, in speeches and sometimes under his breath. _I'm ready._

"You're the best friend he has right now," Caiaphas says. He pushes a plate closer to Judas, making him flinch away from the smell. "You and me, we can end this peacefully."

When an agent of the government talks about peace, it means they think they're winning the war. It _is_ a war, and all at once Judas is sick of both sides, sick of waiting for the world to end. He looks down at his hands on the table and wills them to stop shaking. "I can tell you how to get to Jesus," he says. "But you should know, you can't hold him."

Caiaphas is cutting into his egg with the side of his fork, the yolk bleeding out. "You ever been to San Quentin?"

"I don't care where you put him." Judas says, and realizes it's true; he won't be following where Jesus goes this time. He clears his throat, keeps going, picking up speed. "You lock him up without bail, nobody ever sees him again, maybe he gets killed in prison, right? He's planned on that. He becomes a legend, and the movement rises up to get revenge. You think the riots were bad before? He was trying to keep them cool. The things they'll do in his name—"

"People forget quickly." 

"Cities burn quicker."

"If it's your neck you're worried about, we can protect you. Move you out of state."

That's something Judas has wondered about during those sleepless nights. Who would be the one to kill him, Peter or Paul or soft-hearted James? "You have to keep Jesus where everyone can see him," he says. "Show them that he's only human. Take him alive, make him stand trial—"

"Ah." Caiaphas leans back, crossing his arms. "Now we believe in the rule of law."

Judas hates him so much that it's a pleasure. At least he's stopped pretending they're on the same side. So much easier to admit he's making a deal with the devil, an old-fashioned bargain, information in exchange for something Judas values more than money or protection.

"Take him alive," he says again. "Prove him wrong."

He sits back and waits, and Caiaphas blinks first. He tilts his cup toward Judas, the slightest toast, and that will have to be enough. No handshakes, no contract signed in blood. Judas looks down at the plate in front of him and realizes that he is hungry, actually, ravenous. They eat the meal in silence. The government picks up the check.

The strange thing is that Caiaphas keeps the promise he didn't quite make. Nobody else gets hurt. There's shouting and shoving and canisters of tear gas, but they take Jesus without firing a single shot. They drag him away in cuffs, and Judas wants to call after him— _here's your chance, speak truth to power. Aren't you the one who told me, the truth will set you free?_

Judas still believes that. He clings to it through the days of silence that follow. As he walks off the compound for the last time, wandering deeper into the desert. No one gets the pleasure of killing him, or even finding his body. The heat and the sand will strip his bones. And even now, even now, Jesus still breathes, so he could speak, set them all free—

— _Shema yisrael,_ Judas remembers to whisper, in the last slow motion minute of his life, staring straight up into the high noon sun. Hear, oh, Israel—

—with a single word.

 

*

 

It's dark when Judas opens his eyes. He knows that he's dead. And he's sure that it's not the first time. Maybe the Buddhists were right about reincarnation. He's part of something, a mandala, a pattern that might make sense if he could see it from the sky.

There ought to be some kind of comfort in knowing that. Consolation. Instead Judas feels like a shotgun has blasted his chest open, blown away everything but rage.

"Why?" he shouts—he knows now that Jesus will hear him. "You knew this was going to happen. Why won't you save yourself? Why don't you fucking fight back?"

"Sometimes fighting is weakness," Jesus says. He stands next to Judas, his profile lit up in gold and red, as if he's watching a sunset, or a forest fire. He is still looking at the world, and it's beautiful. "Sometimes resistance is strength."

"Fuck your riddles," Judas says. "You're not resisting, you're _dying_ —" 

Jesus flicks his eyes toward him, unbearably bright. "And the movement rises up," he says.

Judas feels like screaming, but his voice freezes up. He follows Jesus' gaze, but of course he only sees darkness. No horizon. He would reach for Jesus, shake him, force him to face him like a man, but the distance between their bodies is unbridgeable. Maybe it always was, even in life. He only ever seemed close enough to touch.

"Tell me something you haven't before," Judas says. "Give me one good reason. If you can."

"I'm tired," Jesus says, very softly. "I don't have time. Ask me to forgive you."

That frozen scream is a howl in the void, yes, please, yes. Judas is waiting for the word, the only kind of peace he can imagine. It's what he dreamed would happen if the two of them had survived. They would forgive each other, wash the blood from their hands and begin again.

Begin and _end_ again. He recoils. "I don't want you to forgive me, I want you to _stop_ me."

"That's not what happens," Jesus says. The firelight fades from his face, and he is a shadow, and then he is not there. The rage goes with him, leaving Judas hollow and utterly alone. He waits to forget, and when he has forgotten, he waits to begin.

 

*

 

They're camping on the edge of the Mojave, the Gobi, the Sahara. A tent billowing in the wind, or a trailer off the freeway. Fire in a barrel, a bottle of wine passed hand to hand. They're living on a boat, on the salt ocean that has risen to cover Miami, floating above thousands of graves.

There will always be a desert, somewhere.

There's a woman in the camp, and Judas hates her, despite—or because of—the deep unspoken sympathy between them. She loves Jesus, as he does, and yet she does nothing to save him. She bears silent witness, takes up her share of the weight of the cross. She follows Jesus one step further than Judas can, and he never learns what will happen to her, how she lives after they are gone.

The poor are always with them, and so are the Romans, the government, the lawmakers giving orders to the drones. There is always a back stripped bare and an upraised whip. This is the way of things, and he cannot resign himself to it. He is always at war.

He betrays Jesus with a kiss. Kneeling to kiss the hem of his garment, kissing his hand where the nail will find it, kissing his cheek with cold lips under the searchlights. He kisses his mouth and Jesus kisses him back. He tries to turn his face away and Jesus pulls him closer, a hand gripping the back of his skull, hungry for it, kissing him until they're forced apart.

This is the strangest moment, the split second after he's done the worst thing that he could ever do. When Cain killed Abel, they say, the spilled blood cried out from the earth. But first there must have been an instant like this, a hush, a held breath—

It's done, Judas thinks, every time, filled with a sense of relief so wild and powerful it has to be called joy. It's done, it's over. Nothing will ever hurt like that again.

 

*

 

It's so dark that Judas can't tell whether his eyes are closed or open. Without direction or light to guide him, he starts walking. There is nothing he hopes to find, no threshold to cross. It's enough to feel that, for the moment, he's moving forward instead of backward.

"We walk by faith and not by sight," Jesus says, falling into step with him.

"Faith," he says. "That's your answer for everything. That's how you justify what you'll do, and what you won't—it's a cheap excuse." But they've had this argument before, haven't they? He forgets, every time the darkness lifts. He is born blind. Jesus goes knowingly, willingly. "How many times do we have to kill each other?"

"How many times does the truth need to be told?"

"Nobody tells the truth," Judas says. "It doesn't make a good story. The truth is, you run full speed at your death. Put the knife in my hand and twist it. You could do it without me, but you'd have no one to blame." 

"I love the world," Jesus says. His words are a little slurred. Somewhere he is lying unconscious, sleeping in his own blood. "I can't break my own ties to it."

"Another excuse."

"Maybe." 

"Find another knife to throw yourself on," Judas says.

"I can't," Jesus says. "It's always you."

Judas stops walking, and Jesus stops with him. Invisible in the dark, warmth in the shape of a man, a body that Judas knows by touch. "I hope that next time I kill you with my own two hands." 

"Betray me for money, and you were never really with me," Jesus says. It is the far-off voice he uses when he seems to tell the future, when what he's really doing is remembering. "Betray me because you mean to save me, and it cuts to the bone. A sacrifice is only pure when you love what you lose."

What kind of God would demand such a sacrifice? Judas doesn't ask. It's the wrong question, it will throw him back to the beginning. "I'm not the only one," he says, instead.

"The only one who loved me," Jesus says, gently, "or the only one I loved?"

"Either." His throat is tight, his voice broken. "I'm never the only one."

"No. But you burn the brightest."

That buckles Judas's legs. He lets himself sink, knees hitting the ground, a painless shock like stone against stone. "You chose me," he says. "You knew what you were doing. You touched me on the shoulder, and you said—"

He chokes up, because Jesus has followed him down, kneeling across from him. He reaches out and hovers his hand over Judas's shoulder. There is no contact, but the heat from his hand blooms on Judas's skin, a flame.

"Yes," Judas whispers. "Like that."

"I said, come with me, that's all," Jesus says, and draws a trail of heat across Judas's wounded throat, along the curve of his cheek where tears would fall. "Come with me."

And he is gone. Judas waits for the flame to go out. But it stays. It deepens, shines into and out of him until there is enough light to see by. There is his own shadow, stretching ahead of him. There is the road.

 

*

 

In times like these, summers of drought, it's dangerous to breathe. The sky is heavy and dull as lead, and the wind blows hot sand into every open window, every open eye. Judas stops on the roadside, unwinds the scarf over his face. He takes out his canteen and slowly, carefully pours a little water onto the cloth.

Someone comes up alongside him, coughing. A man about his age—younger, Judas thinks, for no real reason, since all he can see is dark eyes. They size each other up the way that travelers always do, when they cross paths in a country where most people are hungry enough to steal.

The man seems like he's about to say something, but another bout of coughing makes him double over. Judas hands him the canteen. The man throws his head back and drinks for what feels like ten solid minutes. The canteen should be empty when he passes it back. But its weight is good in Judas's hand.

"Which way are you headed?" the man asks.

Judas shrugs. It's never wise to answer that question, and besides, at this moment, he's not sure he can tell east from west. The wind is that wild.

Just by his eyes, Judas can tell the stranger is smiling. "Yeah, I don't know, either," he says.

Judas starts to laugh, then stops, his throat closing up. He's used to this blackout weather, to covering his face and counting his rations. But there are still moments when it takes him by surprise, when it's hard to believe he's not dying.

The stranger steps toward him. "Come with me," he says, and touches Judas on the shoulder—

—and the wind rises, like voices in a choir—

—and Judas has a sting in his eyes that has nothing to do with the sand, a taste in his mouth like sweat and silver, the taste of absolute, animal fear—

—and he hears himself almost shouting into the storm. " _No._ " 

"No?" The stranger raises his eyebrows. "Thank you for the water, then."

Judas nods and begins to wrap his scarf around his face. The water is cool against his chapped skin, a blessing. It reminds him where he's going, the turn that will take him home.

The man is walking in the opposite direction, long strides up the road to Jerusalem. In a second, he'll disappear into the dust that rises from the road. Judas knows, somehow, that he will never see the stranger again, and that ought to be enough to kill the fear. It's no great loss to him, no sacrifice.

It's only a sacrifice, someone told him once, when you love what you must lose.

He curses to himself, breathes in deep, sets his eyes on the stranger, and follows.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by soupytwist, mazily, and kutsushita. Happy 'tiding to you.


End file.
